Went down to the wash to get some sand for neighbor J. The wash is kinda wet, which made my usual method of scooping up a bucket of sand…problematic.
She’s goin’ down, Captain!
Yeah.
To the frame.
In the wash.
During Monsoon.
Low point in hermitting career, achieved.
And I started hopelessly digging, because what else are you going to do? And then the voice of reason spoke up – the one that usually only drops by later, to tell me what I should have done. And it said…
“Hey, Dumbass! It’s a backhoe. It’s got outriggers.”
Well yes, yes it does.
Why don’t more vehicles have outriggers?
This made filling in the ruts much simpler.
So I did. And then … I proceeded to dig new ones. I just didn’t have the traction to get myself out of this situation.
Hm.
There’s a technique for moving a stuck backhoe. I’ve read about it. I’ve never seen it done. God knows I’ve never tried to do it. I mostly devote my efforts to not getting stuck in the first place, but we were clearly past that now.
And so I filled in the ruts again, and smoothed out the paths for the wheels. And then I started the engine, cranked the throttle, left it in neutral, and…
Turned the seat around to face the backhoe controls. And sonovagun, you really can drag a stuck tractor out of a bad situation using the backhoe. It not only works, it works very well.
And it can pick itself up and turn around without the wheels touching the ground, except for the repositioning.
But you have to have the room.
That works, unless you are sliding downhill on ice and one of the front tires has trees on both sides of the axle (I still don’t know how the tire fit between the trees), then you need a power saw and another piece of equipment.
Bad hearing helps too, when the “how did you do that” questions start.
I’m sorry. What?
“you really can drag a stuck tractor out of a bad situation using the backhoe. It not only works, it works very well.”.
Not always.
I got a call once when I worked as the field mechanic for a rental outfit about a stuck backhoe.
I drove out to this mudhole of a field and found a four wheel drive back hoe stuck clear to the frame on all four corners and listing hard to port. There were huge holes and piles of muck all the way around it from the guy trying to drag it out like that, for hours.
We wound up bringing in a D8 Dozer and dragging it out. Almost got that thing stuck doing it! I was standing on the high side of the hoe with one foot on the deck and one hand on the wheel,ready to jump, trying to help steer it and it came within a cats whisker of tipping over anyways.
I never did hear what that little fiasco cost the guy but you can bet it was a bunch.